With thousands of genealogy blogs out there, I certainly don’t expect all of them to visit my blog every day. Some may never visit here, and I may never visit theirs. And you know what? That’s OK.

I don’t write posts for traffic (although I do appreciate my readers immensely) or even tons of comments. The reason I write is to create a collection of my posts for posterity. I use Tabbloid to save them in PDF format where they go into a special file folder named :::surprise::: iPentimento as Tabbloid. I may put them on my external drive someday, but currently they reside on my desktop. Tabbloid converts all the text and photos included in the articles and makes it look like a magazine.

When I write an article about a surname I always include it in the post title, and have post tags for the search engine bots to find. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard from a cousin or made a new friend just because they “found” my post while doing a search.

Lastly, I’m not in any specific category of genealogy or history blog writer. I’ve learned to use a WordPress self-hosted blog platform by trial and error. If you had to put me in some niche, I suppose it could be a gen-geek. I love plugins that make my life easier; technology is fascinating to me and I use as much of it as I can afford. I try not to fall back on making excuses for sporadic articles because I have fibromyalgia, but it is a big factor in how I feel each day. It doesn’t define me though. I write about genealogy to take my mind off any pain I might be feeling that day.

Let me begin by saying, I don’t care what you do with your genealogy blog. I only care about what I do. That’s not meant to sound mean. I just don’t want to have you think I’m “instructing” you on how you have to promote your articles. What I am asking is…

Are You A Blog Snob?

I had an interesting discussion with some genealogy folks on Facebook last week about leaving comments. It’s no secret that I find it very frustrating to write a comment on someone’s blog, only to discover they have no way to leave a comment using the Name/URL choice. One person even said, “I don’t care if anyone leaves comments or not”, and “I just tell them to get a g-mail account”. I found that a bit callous and unfriendly, but also made me ask the question in the title of this post: What Is The Point Of Your Genealogy Blog Then?

Obviously, this is mostly an issue with Google Blogger hosted blogs. Of course, Google is going to promote their platform and other Google based applications. Fine, I get that. But isn’t genealogy and blogging about sharing information and ideas? What if you wrote a really great post and actually wanted to share it with other people?

My Reasons For Writing This Blog

First, and foremost, I write articles here because I want to share our family histories with everyone. I also want to preserve my articles for the grandkids and beyond so I use Tabbloid because it turns them into PDF files that I can then put in a folder. Tabbloid is a wonderfully FREE service by Hewlett Packard. They can turn any favorite feed into a magazine and then they will email it to you promptly. Yes, even including the photos and graphics in your post.

Recently, I began another free way of sharing genealogy and history based articles using Small River’s paper.li and created The Genealogists #Genealogy Daily. Because I already had created a list of genealogists with my Twitter account (find me as webduck on Twitter) I used that particular @webduck/genealogists way to incorporate like-minded writers into the (twice) Daily publication. It was so easy, free, and helps by promoting genealogy and history blogs all in one place. It’s not a popularity contest like the Family Tree Magazine’s Top 40 Genealogy Blogs, but a way to put us all on an even playing field. That’s not sour grapes by me, I just think there are MORE than 40 top blogs.

The thrust of all this is that while I certainly do promote my own genealogy blog, I want to help promote yours too. If you write some great content I want to be able to hit the share button and post it to Twitter or any other social networking site. Please help me help YOU!